Come all ye young females, I pray you'll attend
To these twa or three letters that I've newly penned,
To let you understand the hardships I undergo,
When first I fell in love wi' young Sally Monroe.

I wrote her a letter, a letter I did send;
I sent it with a comrade I thought to be a friend.
Instead of bein' a friend to me, he proved to be a for,
And he never gave that letter to young Sally Monroe.

It was on a Sunday morning about six o'clock,
'Twas all in a sudden our ship did strike a rock.
Three hundred and fifty were all sank below,
And out among that number I lost Sally Monroe.

'Twas from her aged parents I stole her away,
And that will grieve my conscience till my dying day.
It was not for to injure her that I did do so,
And all my life I'll mou-rn for young Sally Monroe!

It was the Stately Southerner, that carried the Stripes and Stars,
The whitling wind from west-nor'-west blew through her pitch-pine spars.
With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung up to the gale,
'Twas an autumn night, we raised the light on the Old Head of Kinsale.

It was a clear and cloudless night; the wind blew steady and strong,
As gaily over the sparkling deep our good ship bowled along.
With the fiery foam beneath her bows the white wave she did spread,
And bending alow her bosom in mow she buried her lee cathead.

There was no talk of short'ning sail by him who walked the poop,
And 'neath the press of her ponderous jib the boom bent like a hoop;
And the groaning waterways told the strain that held her stout main-tack,
But he only laughed as he gazed abaft at the white and glist'ning track.

The mid-tide meets in the channel waves that flow from shore to shore,
And the mist hung heavy along the land from Featherstone to Dunmore,
And that sterling light on Tuskar Rock, where the old bell tolls each hour,
And the beacon light that shone so bright was quenched on Waterford tower.

What looms upon our starboard bow, what hangs upon the breeze?
'Tis time our good ship hauled her wind abreast the old Saltees,
For by her ponderous press of sail and by her stunted spars
We saw that our morning visitor was a British man-o'-war.

Up spake our noble Captain then as a shot ahead of us passed :
"Haul snug your flowing courses! Lay your topsails to the mast!"
Those Englishmen gave three loud hurrahs from the deck of their covered ark,
And we answered back by a solid broadside from the deck of our patriot bark.

"Out booms! Out booms!" our skipper cried: "Out booms and give her sheet!"
For the swiftest keel that ever was launched in all of the British fleet
Came pondering down upon us with the white foam at her bow;
"Out booms! Out booms! and give her sheet! spare not your canvas now!"

But a swifter keel was 'neath our feet, nor did our sea-boys dread
When the Star-spangled banner was hoisted; to the mizzen peak was spread,
And amid a thundering shower of shot with stunsails hoisting away,
Down the North Channel Paul Jones did steer just at the break of day.

I met her in the morning
Ch: Won't you go my way?
I met her in the morning;
Ch: Won't you go my way?

In the morning bright and early.

O Julia, Anna, Maria.

I asked that girl to marry.

She said she'd rather tarry.

Oh marry, never tarry.